would like your opinions on a repair charge

W

wickerdave

New Member
I have used computers for 35 + years at home and at work, so I am somewhat familiar with the costs of upkeep and repair. My Gateway computer HD crashed after about 5 years of use. Took it into local repair shop, he said HD is no good and computer needs cleaned up. Purchased new HD from him, he cleaned the machine of viruses etc. I paid $215.00 to repair store. 1 1/2 months later the HD was bad. He told me I had to deal with Western Digital myself and get the new HD from their warranty department. I thought this a bit odd but I did it anyway. Received the new HD at no cost from Western Digital (other than my $16.00 shipping charge), took it to repair store along with a Flight Simulator game I asked him to install for me. He installed the new HD, the game, and said he saved all my original data and charged me $115.00 which I paid. I got home told my wife about and she looked at me like I was an idiot and discovered that he saved none of my information. Genaral consensues is that I should not have had to pay 2nd fee or handled HD return myself. Before I confront my repair guy on Monday Ithought I would see what you guys think.

Thank you
 
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1. If the hard drive was no good, then there would be no viruses to remove as you can't access the hard drive.

2. As a computer repair person myself, I deal with all the rma's for my clients. I keep copies of all receipts for warranty purposes.

3. With not knowing exactly what the repair person did, its hard to tell what the cost should have been. Its possible the drive just had errors on it but was still able to access windows and he cloned the operating system to the new drive, which technically shouldn't have been done. Should have installed a fresh copy of windows on the new drive.
 
That sounds shiesty. I would dispute some of those charges if the service wasn't performed, like 'cleaning up a computer' that has a new hard drive. You don't 'clean up' a fresh install, although as above the details are kind of vague.

He's taking advantage of you since you ask questions like 'can you install this game for me'.
 
Personally if it was the shop I worked at, it all Would have been done for free because we have a 90 day warranty on all our repairs (except virus removals). So he kinda took you for a ride there.

The original $215 sounded fine though (except for your mention of viruses - as John said if the original drive was bad there would be no viruses to remove anyway.) because we charge $225 for a new hard drive and installation of Windows. Data backup is an extra $50 on top of that, so you got a good deal. Like I said, the second repair should have been free under some kind of repair warranty through them. It's not your fault the new HDD crapped out that quick.

Also I'm surprised he doesn't have a large drive he saves customer data on. We had multiple 1+tb drives we saved customer data on and we retained it for several months after the repair just in case something happened again. I'd dispute most of the charges with them. Sorry to hear you had a bad experience.
 
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At the shop I used to go to they have a policy where on any parts you buy you have a hot swap for 30 days then after that you deal with the manufacturer.
 
settled dispute

I met with the repair guy today and after about 20 minutes of give and take we settled on him giving me a $70.00 refund which I think was fair enough. Thanks everyone for the input.
 
At the local shop I occasionally deal with here, the shop owner handles warranty issues, and there is no labor charge for warranty work.
 
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